Saturday, April 30, 2016

At the B&N Teen Blog Natalie Zutter tagged nine classic Young Adult books ripe for some creative genderbending of the main characters, including:

The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

How would you know you weren’t being a phony? The trouble is, you wouldn’t. You really want to tell me a girl can’t be just as obsessed with her peers’ phoniness as a boy? Fakeness is a weapon, something women are conditioned at a young age to be repulsed by. Though the genderqueer Dela (meaning “hollow valley,” same as Holden) probably wouldn’t share Holden’s fears of being perceived as homosexual, or his belief that it’s up to him to save young children from losing their innocence.

Friday, April 29, 2016

Dark Parties, Sara Grant's first young adult novel, won the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Crystal Kite Award for Europe. Her new series is Chasing Danger – an action-adventure series for tweens.

One of Grant's ten top thrilling locations in children’s books, as shared at the Guardian:

Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell

On Sophie’s first birthday, she’s found floating in a cello case in the English Channel. This beautifully written tale takes flight from the rooftops of Victorian Paris. This book offers a unique perspective on one of the top tourist destinations of all time. “Clocks below her began to strike four, and Paris was waking. Its sound was like the hum of a hundred secrets, she thought: it was the mutter of a dozen soothsaysers.”

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Light Box is K J Orr's first collection of short stories. One of her top ten short stories that hinge on crossing boundaries, as shared at the Guardian:

"Axolotl" by Julio Cortázar

Tracing the metamorphosis of a man into a reptile, this can be read as a love letter to literature – to the connective power of writing and reading. What is at stake here is the awareness of “the presence of a different life, of another way of seeing”. In meticulous detail, the narrator describes the shift of perception that takes him from watching axolotls through a pane of glass in to their alien experience.

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Sylvain Neuvel's new novel is Sleeping Giants. One of his ten top speculative fiction novels with serious science, as shared at the B & N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog:

Hominids, by Robert J. Sawyer

The premise for this parallel universe story is a really good one, but the science is what got me hooked. You could probably use this book to help students pick a field of study. It has a bit of everything: physics, (paleo)anthropology, genetics, quantum computing, etc., etc. Sawyer’s research is impeccable and the science is always solid.

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Biologist and primatologist Frans de Waal's latest book is Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?. One of his six favorite books, as shared at The Week magazine:

Wild Life by Robert Trivers

I have long known Trivers, one of the most brilliant biologists of our time, and read his memoir with growing alarm at how often he has narrowly escaped death in his adventurous life. It's an enlightening read, especially when he uses his typical candor to describe his colleagues.

Monday, April 25, 2016

At the Guardian, writer Andrew Norriss tagged ten favorite characters that offer a helping hand to their heroes, including:

The Sword in the Stone by TH White

This is the first volume of the quartet written by TH White on the Arthurian legend and incomparably funnier and deeper than the amiable Disney movie. If you’re going to have a guardian angel watching over your early years and growing up, Merlin the magician is not a bad choice.

Sunday, April 24, 2016

One title on Dahlia Adler's list of five YA books told from the bully’s perspective, as shared on the B & N Teen Blog:

Tease, by Amanda Maciel

Everyone knows the stories in the news of girls who are bullied to death—girls like Emma. But not everyone knows the other side, where Sara sits. Sara, who has been charged, along with her friends, with driving Emma to suicide. Sara, who had more reasons to hate Emma than everyone knew. Sara, who’s steadfast in her belief that Emma deserved exactly what happened to her. Sara, who’s now the very kind of outcast she and her friends once made Emma, right up until Emma couldn’t take it anymore.

Saturday, April 23, 2016

Rose Tremain was one of only five women writers to be included in Granta’s original list of 20 Best of Young British Novelists in 1983. Her novels and short stories have been published worldwide in 27 countries and have won many prizes. In 2013 was appointed Chancellor of the University of East Anglia. One of the author's six best books, as shared at the Daily Express:

THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy

I’m a hard-hearted reader of fiction but I couldn’t stop crying when I finished this. A father and son traverse a destroyed world and the internal landscape of the characters is captured with power and tenderness.

Like [Junot Díaz's] Oscar Wao, this is another novel that features a generational curse, though the source of the curse can be specifically pin-pointed. Early in the story, one of the characters (Ursula’s mother) warns that a baby born from incest will have the tail of a pig. As the family enters the modern era (or, as the modern era encroaches upon the family), the family morally deteriorates until finally, the prophecy is fulfilled, leaving the pig-tailed baby to be abandoned and eventually eaten by ants. The generational curse is then broken because the family itself is broken.

Friday, April 22, 2016

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and We Are Not Good People from Pocket/Gallery. He has published over thirty short stories as well. At the B&N Reads blog Somers tagged ten books to read before traveling to Cuba, including:

The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway

You shouldn’t need much prompting to read a novel that won the Pulitzer Prize and was instrumental in earning its author the Nobel Prize in Literature, but if you’re headed to Cuba then Papa’s classic account of an elderly Cuban fisherman who spends months attempting to catch a giant marlin off the coast of Florida is essential. Hemingway lived in Cuba off and on for two decades and was an avid fisherman, so for all its lyricism and symbolism the book is written from an expert’s point of view, and many feel it captures the spirit of the country.

Thursday, April 21, 2016

Michael Honig is a former surgeon and lives in England. The Senility of Vladimir P. is his first novel. One of Honig's ten top books on Vladimir Putin's Russia, as shared at the Guardian:

Putin’s Kleptocracy by Karen Dawisha

Published in the US but not in Britain – for fear of the UK’s tyrant-friendly libel laws – American academic Karen Dawisha’s book provides a dispassionate, extensively researched account of Putin’s early criminality and the descent of the Russian government into an engine of organised crime. A must-read for anyone asking if the Putin regime is really as corrupt as people say and who wants to see the balance of evidence for themselves.

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

L.S. Hilton grew up in England and has lived in Key West, New York City, Paris, and Milan. After graduating from Oxford, she studied art history in Paris and Florence. She has worked as a journalist, art critic, and broadcaster, and is presently based in London. Her new novel is Maestra. One of Hilton's top ten female-fronted thrillers, as shared at the B&N Reads blog:

Alias Grace, by Margaret Atwood

Mental illness, spiritual fanatics, a notorious nineteenth-century murderess who has been misunderstood, this book has everything.

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and We Are Not Good People from Pocket/Gallery. He has published over thirty short stories as well. Somers notes that sometimes that dash of uncertainty over what’s real and what may have seemed magical to those involved can elevate historical fact into near-fantastical fiction. At the B & N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog he tagged six historical fiction novels that are almost fantasy, including:

I, Claudius, by Robert Graves

The Romans were a superstitious lot, convinced that the gods influenced every moment of their lives and could be manipulated through offerings, sacrifices, and prayers. They often believed in magic and saw it everywhere, and even Rome’s masters weren’t immune to its influence. In telling the story of Claudius, proclaimed Emperor after his nephew Caligula was murdered, Graves offers us a perceptive, intelligent man who sincerely tries to be a good emperor—but who also sees prophecy, magic, and a hidden world of spirits everywhere he looks. Graves’ peerless writing makes the often dull business of ruling an empire seem fascinating, and the hero’s tragic life will make you feel pity for an emperor for perhaps the only time in your life, even as it transforms ancient Rome into a doomed fantasy kingdom.

Monday, April 18, 2016

At the B & N Teen Blog, Jenny Kawecki tagged five top Young Adult novels about the afterlife, including:

The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall, by Katie Alender

When Delia inherits a house from her aunt, she doesn’t know the house used to be an insane asylum…or that it’s haunted. But something darker lurks in Hysteria Hall than just the ghosts of troubled girls, and when Delia gets unexpectedly trapped in the house, she’s forced to figure out what it is and how to stop it, or her family’s lives might be at stake. As if that wasn’t hard enough, all she has got to help her are some crazy, strong-willed ghosts and guarded warnings from the creeped-out locals. Will that be enough?

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Sona Charaipotra is a New York City-based writer and editor with more than a decade’s worth of experience in print and online media. For the B & N Teen Blog she tagged ten YA books that might change your life, including:

Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson

Okay, so I always start my Brown Girl Dreaming recs with the caveats that a) it’s middle grade, b) it’s verse, and c) it’s a memoir. But all that being said, Woodson’s Dreaming—a National Book Award winner and Coretta Scott and Newbery honoree—is a must-read. Her languorous and thoughtful ruminations on her childhood growing up in both the Jim Crow South of the ’60s and rough and tumble ’70s Brooklyn is rhythmic and mesmerizing, full of quiet spirit and insights as a young girl discovers herself as reader, a writer, and so much more.

Brian Conaghan was raised in the Scottish town of Coatbridge but now lives and works as a teacher in Dublin. His books include When Mr Dog Bites, The Boy Who Made It Rain, and the newly released The Bombs That Brought Us Together. One of his ten favorite teen books about male friendship, as shared at the Guardian:

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle

Set in the 1960s North Dublin and narrated by 10-year old Paddy Clarke, the eldest child of his family. Paddy has a glut of friends; he’s probably closest to Kevin Conway, a rather unlikeable kid, and James O’Keefe, is a good deal more - despite being, quite possibly, the biggest liar in Barrytown. The most adorable of Paddy’s friends, however, are a pair of brothers called Liam and Aidan. The boys’ mother is dead, and though their father is trying his best, he seems to be a little lost.

It’s set at a time when not only society is changing, but Paddy’s home life and friendships are dramatically changing too. There’s a certain sadness about watching Paddy grow up as the story unfolds; witnessing his trajectory from the warmth of the book’s beginning to the tragedy of the book’s denouement.

Saturday, April 16, 2016

A native of Seattle and Soldotna, Alaska, Steve Toutonghi studied fiction and poetry while completing a BA in Anthropology at Stanford. After pursuing a variety of interests, he began a career in technology that led him from Silicon Valley back to Seattle. Join is his first novel.

At Tor.com, Toutonghi tagged six top books that expand our mental horizons, including:

Neuromancer (William Gibson, 1984)

In Neuromancer, characters enhance their mental abilities by tapping into a network. Maybe ironically, these connected characters are fighting for different kinds of personal freedom. At the end of the story, we learn that an AI may be on a path toward ultimate truth, but if it is, it will leave its human creators behind to find it.

Friday, April 15, 2016

Scottish writer Karen Campbell is the author of six novels, most recently Rise and This is Where I Am. One of her ten top books about freedom, as shared at the Guardian:

Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky

An incomplete novel set in occupied France, written by a woman whose voice was extinguished by the Nazis – yet lives on in an unfinished masterpiece. There can’t be any more poignant or eloquent tribute to freedom of expression than that.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

At the Guardian Phoebe Walker tagged eight of the best feasts quotes in literature, including:

"The most prominent object was a long table with a table-cloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks all stopped together. An épergne or centre-piece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite undistinguishable; and, as I looked along the yellow expanse out of which I remember its seeming to grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckled-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it>"
--Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, published 1861

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Jeff Somers is the author of We Are Not Good People, the Avery Cates series, Lifers, and Chum. He has published over thirty short stories, including “Ringing the Changes,” which appeared in the Best American Mystery Stories 2006 anthology. One of his ten fictional characters based on actual people, as shared at the B&N Reads blog:

Sethe from Beloved, by Toni Morrison

Anyone who has read Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel likely had to compose themselves after the revelation of the shattering backstory of the main character, Sethe, an escaped slave who (spoiler alert!) killed her two-year-old daughter rather than see her snatched back to the plantation. The emotional response grows only more powerful when you learn Sethe was based on a slave named Margaret Garner, who fled from Kentucky to Ohio when one of the coldest winters in recorded history froze the Ohio River solid enough to serve as an escape route. When slave-catchers surrounded the house she had barricaded herself in, she did in fact kill her daughter, and when captured, was in the process of killing her other children in order to spare them a life of slavery. Margaret never stood trial; returned to her owners in Kentucky, she was moved frequently in a successful effort to hide her from the Northern authorities.

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Jeff Wheeler's latest novel is The Queen's Poisoner. At Tor.com he tagged five novels where assassins are the good guys, including:

The Druid of Shannara by Terry Brooks

This book is one of my all-time favorite novels by Brooks and the reason is because of Pe Ell. This assassin works for the bad guys and the good guys simultaneously and it’s never clear exactly which he prefers. Truly, he’s on his own side and his interests align with the good guys—most of the time. Pe Ell relishes a challenge. He takes risks. To say he’s mercurial doesn’t begin to do it justice. He has a magical blade called the Stiehl and he’s never afraid to use it. He was one of the most original characters that Brooks invented in his Shannara world.

Monday, April 11, 2016

Padma Lakshmi is the host of Top Chef, Bravo's long-running TV series. Her new memoir is Love, Loss, and What We Ate. One of her six favorite books, as shared at The Week magazine:

The Art of Eating by M.F.K. Fisher

No other writer has inspired me more. M.F.K. Fisher has an uncanny knack for taking something mundane and rendering it sublime. She salts her writing with good common sense and peppers it with a wicked wit.

Sunday, April 10, 2016

At the B&N Reads blog Kat Rosenfield tagged ten of the worst traitors in fiction, including:

The Marquise de Merteuil, Dangerous Liaisons

This old-school epistolary dive into the sexual intrigues of the aristocracy in France’s Ancien Regime is rife with two-faced friends and lovers, but no one plays all sides like the beautiful, villainous Marquise. By the time she gets her comeuppance in the form of exile and a ruined face, she has betrayed basically every major character in the book—sometimes more than once.

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Freya North is the author of many bestselling novels including The Turning Point. One of her six best books, as shared at the Daily Express:

MISTER PIP by Lloyd Jones

A slim novel that’s compelling and exquisitely written. It’s about a teacher, the only white man on an idyllic island, who has only one book to teach from. It’s Great Expectations which is my favourite Dickens. Some bits are shocking, others are uproariously funny.

Vivian Gornick's latest book is The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir. One of four books that changed the author, as shared at the Sydney Morning Herald:

Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence

I read this book three times between the ages of 20 and 35, each time identifying with another character, until at last I saw myself as the hero. This was the first book to teach me to think about the intimate relation between life and literature. It taught me to appreciate the fact that we find the books we need to read, at every stage of our lives that we can make the best use of them.

Friday, April 8, 2016

Jeff Somers is the author of We Are Not Good People, the Avery Cates series, Lifers, and Chum. He has published over thirty short stories, including “Ringing the Changes,” which appeared in the Best American Mystery Stories 2006 anthology. One of his six top books that offer as much practical education as entertainment value, as shared at the B&N Reads blog:

Haunted, by Chuck Palahniuk

Anyone seeking a list of books to read in order to learn how to write would do well to include Haunted. The way it calls attention to its own structure—the main story is about a group of eccentric writers who agree to be locked away from the world for a period of time in order to force themselves to write their masterpieces, with the plot interrupted regularly by short stories written by the characters—coupled with the way Palahniuk explores the link between inspiration, personality, and creativity, make it a useful work for anyone trying to translate lived experiences into fiction.

Swapna Haddow is the author of Dave Pigeon: How to Deal with Bad Cats and Keep (Most of) Your Feathers, illustrated by Sheena Dempsey. At the Guardian she tagged her ten top unappreciated animal heroes, including:

Templeton from Charlotte’s Web by EB White and Garth Williams

I’m sure many of you will be surprised that I didn’t choose Charlotte from Charlotte’s Web as my unappreciated hero. Charlotte is a kindly spider who, despite the spider typecast, saves Wilbur and her babies at the sacrifice of her own life. And don’t get me wrong, she is most definitely a hero but for this top 10, I chose Templeton as his character goes on so much more of a journey to heroism in this story. Stick with me and you’ll see.

Templeton is a grumpy rat and he is most definitely not a likeable character. He’s bad-tempered and selfish and even EB White describes him as having “no morals”. He needs so much coaxing to get on board to help save Wilbur’s life but despite that Templeton eventually proves himself a true hero when he abandons his ratty ways and helps save Charlotte’s babies.

Thursday, April 7, 2016

Melissa Harrison is an author, freelance writer and occasional photographer who lives in South London. Her second novel, At Hawthorn Time was shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year award and longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her new non-fiction book is Rain: Four Walks in English Weather. At the Guardian, Harrison tagged her ten top depictions of British rain, including:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

The night Heathcliff disappears from the Heights, having overheard Cathy say that to marry him would “degrade” her, a violent thunderstorm adds to the novel’s already high foul-weather count. Cathy stays up all night, “bonnetless and shawlless”, calling for him in the rain. The next day she comes down with a fever that nearly kills her. The association between Heathcliff and bad weather persists – when his body is discovered, the window open, “his face and throat were washed with rain; the bed-clothes dripped, and he was perfectly still”.

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Alwyn Hamilton is the author of Rebel of the Sands. At Tor.com she tagged five heroines quicker to act violently than with a level head, including:

Alanna of Trebond from the Song of the Lioness series by Tamora Pierce

Alanna’s skills as a knight come from years of hard training, working her way from an awkward young squire to the mythical figure of the Lioness Rampant. Every scrap of fighting in this red-headed heroine is learned and hard-earned. Alanna also holds a major place among my favorite heroines because she is the first heroine I remember reading about who dressed as a boy to go looking for a better destiny than the one society has given her. But, looking back, it’s also an awfully impulsive decision for a ruse that she has to spend years keeping up. When Alanna and her brother decide swap places, her twin winds up happily learning magic with no risk, while Alanna is left scrambling to figure out how to hide her true identity as puberty kicks in around a whole bunch of boys who are not quite so clueless that a few of them aren’t going to notice it happening.

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

For The Strand Magazine, Mike Dellosso tagged ten of "the most memorable and captivating novels featuring agents of the CIA," including:

The Camel Club by David Baldacci

In this first of the Camel Club books, we meet the major players—four misfits with checkered pasts who form a watchdog organization of sorts, investigating conspiracy theories. When they witness the murder of a Secret Service agent, things begin to ramp up. Baldacci is a master of writing page-turning conspiracy thrillers. There’s a bunch of other stuff that goes on in this story that complicates the plot and adds to the twists and turns.

Curtis Sittenfeld’s new novel is Eligible, a reimagining of Pride and Prejudice. One of her ten books every Pride and Prejudice fan must read, as shared at the B & N Reads blog:

Stiltsville, by Susanna Daniel

While taking place in a completely different time and place from Pride and Prejudice (late 20th-century Miami), I’d argue Daniel picks up where Austen left off, which is after the wedding vows have been exchanged. Stiltsville follows a marriage over many decades, from start to finish, and it’s incredibly wise, compassionate, and moving.

Monday, April 4, 2016

Helen Macdonald is the author of the acclaimed international best-seller, H Is for Hawk. One of her six favorite books, as shared at The Week magazine:

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

An indelibly powerful exposé of the terrible effects of pesticides, this 1962 book shaped the burgeoning environmental movement. Carson is a phenomenally important writer, and this book is more relevant than ever. We seem to have forgotten the lessons she taught.

Sunday, April 3, 2016

Jesse Andrews is the author the novels Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl and The Haters. At the B&N Teen blog he tagged ten funny YA books including:

The Year of Secret Assignments, by Jaclyn Moriarty

Three girls at a tony Australian school are forced to write letters to three boys at a somewhat more hurting Australian school. Moriarty is superb at brewing voices and terrifically deft with form—the book consists solely of things written by the characters in it, to each other or to themselves. My face hurt from grinning so much after I turned the last page.

Saturday, April 2, 2016

The editors at B & N Reads tagged five of their favorite fun, fearless femmes fatales in fiction, including:

Luckiest Girl Alive, by Jessica Knoll

The “mean girl” trope has been a staple for a long time, even after it was punctured in the titular Lindsay Lohan film. It’s become a bit of lazy shorthand: rich, plastic pretty girls are horrible and cruel. Few books explore what makes Mean Girls so mean in the first place, and even fewer bother to wonder what happens to Mean Girls after high school. Luckiest Girl Alive does both, and performs a remarkable trick by presenting a protagonist who is mean and difficult to like at first, then slowly humanizing her as her twisty and surprising story (trust us, you will think you’ve hit the twist—and then there is another twist) unfolds.

Friday, April 1, 2016

At the B & N Teen Blog, Shaun Byron Fitzpatrick tagged six top YA novels for fans struggling to cope with the end of Downton Abbey, including:

The Luxe, by Anna Godbersen

It’s 1899, when we meet Manhattan socialite Elizabeth Holland…at her funeral, after she has drowned in the Hudson River after her carriage overturned. Sounds suspicious, doesn’t it? Flashback to before her death: Elizabeth and her sister Diana are the belles of the Manhattan social scene, and trying desperately not to let anyone know their family is broke. To save the family, Elizabeth is set to marry the handsome and rakish Henry Schoonmaker, who also happens to have stolen the heart of her best friend…but may be in love with Diana. Not that Elizabeth should mind, since she’s in love with her coachmen, Will (and so’s her maid, Lina). Things are getting confusing, and it sounds like there are plenty of people who’d like to see Elizabeth out of the way.